A blog maintained by the team working to hold
oil giant Chevron accountable for its human rights
and environmental abuses in Ecuador

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Saturday, October 19, 2013

Katie Redford at Earth Rights International posted a blog here, writing eloquently on the privilege to "speak" and limit activism that corporations are enjoying, as the rights of human beings to hold those corporations accountable continues to wane. The struggle of the Lago Agrio Plaintiffs and Steven Donziger is highlighted as an example of SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against
Public Participation) suits by corporate defendants seeking to avoid accountability. Click here, or read on below...

Every
day, human rights defenders around the world risk their lives to stand
up against injustice. Whether investigating government abuse in Syria or
Russia, or exposing corporate abuse in Nigeria or Ecuador, brave
individuals everywhere depend on fundamental rights of free speech to do
their work. The United States has always celebrated such rights as
vital to our democracy—after all, there is a reason that the First
Amendment came first. Yet recent trends, bolstered by a series of
federal and Supreme Court cases, have privileged the free speech rights
of corporations while silencing the living, breathing human beings that
need those rights most.

It’s certainly no news that today’s corporations enjoy unprecedented
global power. Likewise, the corporate lobby’s campaign to stifle human
rights activism has been steadily increasing. Since Citizens United,
which extended First Amendment rights to corporations as “persons”,
we’ve seen bold legal arguments against laws and regulations that would
hold them accountable to fundamental human rights law. This year, for
example, the Supreme Court held in Kiobel v. Shell that
Nigerian survivors of torture and crimes against humanity could not seek
justice against Shell in U.S. Courts. The “mere corporate presence” of
Shell in the U.S. was not enough for the Court to allow the
plaintiffs—lawful residents of the U.S.—to bring their case. Courtroom
doors that have been open to the world’s powerless for over 30 years
are now closing thanks to a concerted effort by the most powerful.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could
push this dangerous precedent even further. Largely outside the radar
of the human rights community, DaimlerChrysler AG v. Bauman
arises out of the company’s alleged participation in targeting labor
activists in Argentina’s Dirty War, a period of terror that involved the
murder, torture and disappearances of thousands of activists and
political dissidents. The allegations are chilling: Mercedes-Benz
Argentina identified workers within its plant as “subversives” to state
security forces, knowing full well that, as a result, those workers
would be abducted, tortured, murdered or “disappeared”. Equally
chilling is the prospect that the Supreme Court will enshrine corporate
rights over human rights in law once again. Like Shell in Kiobel,
the question is whether the German company is legally present in the
U.S. for purposes of jurisdiction. Daimler says that it has a
constitutional right to be treated separate from its subsidiaries. Where that right exists in the constitution is up to anyone’s imagination.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the Supreme Court that’s privileging corporate rights over human rights. The American Petroleum Institute (API) sued the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier this year,
arguing a First Amendment right to make secret payments to foreign
governments. The case concerned Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act
which would require oil, gas and mining companies to disclose the
payments they make to foreign governments, making this information
available to the people living in resource-rich countries for the first
time. Such transparency regulations prevents corruption and promotes
human rights, not least access to vital information that citizens in
resource-rich countries require to demand accountability from their own
governments. Yet the API argued that the First Amendment allows them to
conceal such payments, and the SEC is now revising their rule.

Sadly, these cases are not new or unique. Human rights advocates
have always faced an uphill battle, especially when taking on corporate
abuse. What is new is the way in which our highest courts are
privileging corporations and their rights over those of actual human
beings. SLAPP suits and corporate tactics aimed at discouraging human
rights advocates from speaking out and demanding justice are
time-tested. But the aggressiveness and vigor with which Chevron has
been allowed to pursue such tactics is new, and other corporations are
following suit.

We must ask ourselves this question: How can we speak truth to power when those with power have more rights to speak?